slightly OT: preventing user stupidity

[Bill Vermillion]

On Tue, Feb 08 12:41 , Men gasped, women fainted, and small children 
were reduced to tears as Michael J. Mc Avoy Sr. confessed to all:" 

> To add a line or two...

> Don't leave out the Ultra High Muckie in the MIS department.

> Where I had worked for over 30 years, gone now DOA, SHE decide
> that WE needed a new program/system.

The way you phrased that it almost seems there is some gender bias
there.  At one site where I did work as an outside consultant
one of the women there was the best programmer I think I've ever
met.

Dropped by her husband who needed a 'trophy wife' she went back to
school to get HS equivalency.  The school wouldn't let her do that
as her tests were better than that.  So at the age of 37 with 3
kids to support she went back to school and got a degree.

I only knew this becaused I was curious about the sweat-shirt
she was wearing - Phi Beta Kappa.  She had a straigh 4.0.   

We worked together on several programs. 

> I was working at a cake job in shipping at the time and with
> only my self taught and learned the very hard way I said why
> not wait till we finish out this job, an order worth over 40
> million, why not wait till we finish this then use the new
> system for the newer jobs and phase out the old system.


> Well what in the heck did a non skilled wrench jerker
> (Journeyman Millwright in the eyes of the State of Ohio) know.

> Well let me tell ya.................

> At one point I had found and pointed out any number of ways to
> any number of the Muckies that I told you so. We were using
> both systems at the same time. One program had no idea what the
> other was doing, purchasing bought it once with one program
> then again with the other. At one time I had tallied up almost
> $30,000.00 in double ordered, one of a kind items but, who
> cared.

I've seen that before.  In the above place they were having
connectivity and slowness so they got rid of their $60,000 switch
and replaced it with another that had better specs.  No apprecible
difference - as the basic network layout was WRONG - and some
accessed needed to pass through the switch and assocaited machines
TWICE instead of once.  The first switch was perfectly OK - out tax
dollars paid for the inadequacy of those who 'desgigned' [and I use
that word advisedly] the original system.

> Then they called from the job site looking for a sticker guide.

> Note: A sticker guide is used on a rolling mill, a rolling
> mill is the machine that makes those coils of steel you see on
> trucks and being unloaded off ships from the rest of the world.
> Big fat donuts.

> Now the sticker guide is about the size of a full size pickup
> truck, two of them. I need glasses, but not that bad. One
> system thought it was built, the other had no clue.

A friend of mind told me about a mill he was doing programming on -
and that when there was a power failure it took them over a week to
cut out all picees of steel that had hardened in the rollers.  ISTR
he said that line was close to 2500 feet long - starting with very
very thick slabs out of the furnace ?? and coming out as sheets
a 1/2 mile away.

> I'm telling ya.........

There is no substitue for people who know what they are doing.
However far too often the people who are doing the hiring only
judge by the pieces of paper the applicants have - and so many
times all that means is the ability to pass a test.

The lucky companies are the ones which survive such messes.  The
unlucky ones go bankrupt.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com